


Fish-Mesh Trap

by Alina_writes



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon - Book, Crowley Hates the 14th Century (Good Omens), Demon Summoning, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, The plague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:49:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23179510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alina_writes/pseuds/Alina_writes
Summary: It's the 14th Century, Pestilence walks the earth, and Crowley finds himself in an extremely unfavourable situation.Inspired by the tear-jerking art by fireflysummers and 10yrsart on tumblr.
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 17
Kudos: 145





	Fish-Mesh Trap

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: descriptions of corpses, illness, injuries; Crowley is just not having a great time.  
> This fic is set in the book canon, but can be read as part of the tv canon.

It’s getting cold, now. At least, Crowley thinks it’s getting cold; it’s hard to tell if he’s growing woozy and sluggish from the dropping temperature or the pain. Perhaps it’s both.  
Beneath him, crisscrossing like a net, intersecting lines are carved into the rough stone floor. When he first landed here, knees slamming down on the fish-mesh trap that binds him to this place, the runes were still covered in a fine layer of dust, as if someone had just finished etching them into the floor. Now they are stained with smears of dried blood, the crevices filled with the rust-coloured crust.  
The cellar is windowless, stifling and dark, but he can still tell the passage of time by the thin shafts of light seeping from beneath the locked door. That, and the decay of the bodies around him.  
There are six in total, strewn about the room, limbs mangled and charred as if caught in a vicious explosion. Their flesh has long since putrefied beyond recognition, but Crowley has watched them even before the decomposition set in, and he can still remember where the pink skin ended and the red marks of the Plague began.  
He had tried to save them; disoriented and nauseous and _hurting_ as he was from the summoning and the runes that bound him, he had tried to warn them that whatever they were trying to do with that book of spells, it wouldn’t work, that they would get themselves killed if the spell backfired. But they were desperate, and no amount of persuasion could stop them from finishing the ritual.  


_(I’ll do anything you want,_ he had shouted, slamming his fists against the invisible barrier around him, _just stop whatever you’re doing. That book is too dangerous for you to handle, please, just stop—)_  


He doesn’t remember the explosion itself, but by the time his vision stopped swimming and his ears stopped ringing, all six humans were dead, and he remained trapped within the circle.  
It was a masterful design, almost beautiful in its cruelty. The runes sever a demon’s connection to Hell, leaving them powerless unless they are claimed their new master, who alone can break the circle. Had the ritual been completed, Crowley would have been able to leave the circle; sure, he would still be bound to a human, but he figured that it was something he could wiggle out eventually.  
But the ritual was interrupted, every summoner dead, and the circle remains intact, with Crowley inside, powerless and going nowhere.  
A man-shaped demon cannot starve, nor does he tire from a lack of sleep. Here, in the darkness, cut off from his supply of miracles, all Crowley has is time.  
He could have waited, could have curled up and sleep until the house above him crumbles from the years and the elements, could have waited for the foundations of the earth to shift and collapse the floor beneath him, but he couldn’t.  
Ever since Pestilence mounted their white steed and began to trample Italy with malicious glee, Crowley had been doing whatever he could to sabotage the spread of the disease: he had tempted townspeople to bar their gates, reporting to Downstairs that he was creating riffs between good people; he had led infected ships astray, watching men and rats sink beneath the waves; he had heightened the fear of touch in humans, compelling them to wrap their hands with cloth and avoiding direct contact. But it wasn’t enough. Each day the dead continued to pile higher while the living suffered.  
He had to get out. 

For the first month, he tried to physically break the circle from within. He clawed at the runes, stomped on the carved lines, trying to disrupt the integrity of the circle’s structure. And the runes fought back viciously, leaving his fingers bloodied and singed, his boots burned off and his feet blistered despite the sturdy scale covering them. It was after he lost the most of the skin on his fingers that he was forced to change tactics.  
He tried calling for help then. He shouted as loudly as he could whenever he heard people passing by the house, pleaded, begged, offered reward beyond imagination, screamed until he tasted blood rushing up from his throat.  
No one answered.  
Eventually the footsteps became fewer and further in between. Realization washed over Crowley like freezing waves as he remembered what it must be like for the people outside: with the Plague ravaging across Genoa like a merciless wildfire, those who could afford to travel must have been fleeing the city, while those who couldn’t would be barricading themselves within their homes. None with an ounce of self-preservation would be foolish enough to touch anyone in the streets, much less to investigate the screams coming out of an abandoned house.  
But he continued, because there _had_ to be someone out there, someone _had_ to hear him. Humans had surprised him so many times with their reckless kindness; he _needed_ to believe in that. So he kept on calling, as the bodies around him discolour and decay, as the squirming sounds of carrion insects began to fill up the darkness.  


(Aziraphale’s name sprang to his lips several times, but he bit it back. The angel had received some strongly worded notes for meddling with the Plague. Despite his own predicament, Crowley didn’t want to cause the angel any more troubles. Besides, what angel would risk their place in Heaven for one demon caught in a summoning circle?)

Four months into his captivity, something came along and shattered Crowley’s hopes into a thousand jagged pieces.  
By then, making any sound was like gargling glass shards, but Crowley still cried out when he heard footsteps moving towards his direction. It sounded like two people: one heavy and bulky, the other light and slightly uneven.  


“Please, he managed, desperation and hope filling his lungs like grave dirt, “please help me.”  


A voice spoke up, a high and warbling voice of a child. “Papa,” it said, “there’s someone in that house.”  


“Don’t listen, little one,” another voice answered, rough and hurried. “There’s nothing to be done in that place.”  


“Please,” Crowley choked while the child piped up, “But he sounds like he needs help, Papa…”  


“No,” the man’s voice was stony with resolution. “See that black mark on the door? That means there’s nothing we do can help the people in there. Just like all those houses we saw way back. We’ve got to take care of you right now, little one.”  


“Oh,” the child hesitated. “Is everyone in those houses gone to where Mommy is now?”  


“Yes, darling,” there was a hint of faltering in the father’s voice, the barest hint of tears. “Yes, they’ve all gone now.”  


The rest of their conversation faded as they walked away from the house, but Crowley could no longer hear anything over his own ragged breathing and the blood roaring in his ears. He curled into himself and buried his face between his drawn-up knees, feeling sick to his bones.  
The house was marked, as well as the rest of the town. (There was nothing he could do.)  
No one would enter the house. (There was no one left to save.)  
He couldn’t get out on his own. _(He couldn’t save anyone.)_  
He didn’t realize that he was crying until he was struggling to breathe through the sobs ripping through his body.  


(A shoulder to cry was not a part of the Arrangement, though that did not stop Aziraphale from lacing his warm, plump fingers with Crowley’s cool and slender ones and rubbing soothing circles against the back of Crowley’s hand whenever he found it hard to breath.)  
But there was no angel here to hold him as he wept, so Crowley simply wrapped his arms tighter around himself, waiting for his body to run of grief to spill. 

The next thing he tried, after all sounds of human activity had died down, was to bash his way out.  
It was a stupid, desperate thing to do, he knew, with the runes intact and his demonic powers gone. But he refused to wither away while he could still move, while he could still _do_ something.  
He slammed himself against the barrier of magic, again and again. The runes glowed a sickening crimson with each impact, and the surging feedback of energy scorched through his clothes and scoured his flesh. When he unfurled his wings to beat against the barrier, the lightning bolts of pain that shot through his wings were enough to drop him to the floor, leaving him gasping for air that didn’t seem to reach his lungs.  
Even without his powers, his corporation healed far faster than a human body; even so, he was accumulating injuries faster than his body can recover. At some point, the blistered skin, dislocated joints, and fractured bones simply became too much to bear. But he was twice-damned if he gave up before he body did.  
So he tried until exactly that happened.  
He had crashed into the barrier for the… what was it, the hundredth time? the thousandth time? when he heard a crack, as something in his left shoulder slid out of place. He had fallen to the ground, opening dozens of freshly healed wounds and adding patches of new bloodstains to the floor. Where his left shoulder should be was now a cluster of throbbing, white-hot agony that swept across his left arm with such intensity that he thought he had discorporated himself.  
There was no way he could relocate his shoulder on his own.  
He didn’t think he could keep moving anymore. 

Crowley loses track of time after that. It’s hard to think through the pain that washes over him like sporadic waves. As the temperature begins to drop, he can feel the serpentine parts of himself recoiling from the cold, desperate for a warm nook to coil up and sleep. But the circle has bound him, stripping him of even the ability to shift into his serpent form. The most he can do is to try and lie down without pressing down on any of his burns, bruises, and sprains.  
Is there anyone out there still alive? Crowley remembers the things he saw on his way to Genoa: houses abandoned, shops looted; children tugging at the bodies of their parents, begging them to wake up; humans turning on one another at the slightest suspicion of illness. Where are they now, the father and the child who had escaped this Plague-stricken town? Have they found safety up beyond the border? Or have they simply walked from one living Hell into the another?  


“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Cried the man on the cross, centuries ago. Aziraphale had reassured Crowley that this death would save the souls of humanity, that God’s wrath would die with the Son. Now, watching maggots burrow into the bodies of six people whose only crime was trying to live, Crowley heard the cries echoing in his head again, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”  
(He tried to believe it, so many times, that this time would be the last of God’s tests: the bloodstained rock in Cain’s hand, Abraham’s son upon the altar, Job’s children, the Flood, the Son on the cross. But the tests never end.  
He wonders if this time would be the end.) 

He must have lost consciousness at some point, because when the hammering begins, his eyes snap open, and he scrambles to prop himself up, before choking back a howl of pain as his body remembers the dislocated shoulder, along with the constellation of injuries that caused him to black out in the first place.  
Someone is banging against the door of the cellar, hard. Beyond the door, even from this distance, Crowley can feel their Presence, burning with Divine Intervention. It should terrify a demon like him, but within that Presence is something familiar, something _safe_ , like the smell of ink in old tomes, like warm fingers tangled in his own.  
The door explodes in a shower of splinters, and sunlight floods the cellar. Despite the stabbing pain in his sensitive eyes, Crowley strains to look up, because standing at the threshold, haloed by the light and clad in a monk’s habit, is Aziraphale.  
The angel has not changed much since the last time they met; his head is still shaved in that ridiculous fashion of the monks, and his black robe is in immaculate condition, despite being in close proximity with a recently-exploded door.  
For the space of one heartbeat, Crowley feels as if his chest would burst from relief. But then he sees Aziraphale’s eyes.  
The surge of joy is overtaken by a jolt of panic as he follows the angel’s gaze and sees the carcasses around him, carcasses mangled and reeking of demonic powers. And he knows exactly how it all looks.  
Aziraphale’s face is a mask of frozen shock, and Crowley feels fear creeping up his throat, choking him as the reality of his position dawns on him. The light around Aziraphale suddenly feels far too bright and oppressing, like Divine Fury poised to strike.  
Ignoring the agony that spikes through his body with his every movement, Crowley scrambles backwards, desperately trying to distance himself from the attack about to come.  


“I’m sorry.” Each syllable feels like its tearing his vocal cord to ribbons, but he rips them out anyway. “I didn’t—it wasn’t me!”  


(Dimly, he realizes that this is the most he has moved since he found himself in the circle. He can’t feel the bind of the circle anymore.)  


“Crowley—” Aziraphale is saying, but Crowley can’t hear anything over the roaring blood and terror in his head. His heart feels like it’s crashing through his ribcage, yet his bones feel as if they have been replaced with ice.  


“I swear it, angel!” His dislocated shoulder bumps against the rough stone wall behind him, but he barely registers the pain beneath the blinding panic that is flooding his veins, his lungs, his head, “I swear,” the words are spilling out of his mouth like water out of a broken vase, like blood gushing from an open wound. “I’m sorry, believe me, I wouldn’t—”  


Aziraphale ignores his pleas. He reaches out a hand. Crowley can almost feel the Holiness radiating from it, ready to deliver Divine Retribution.  


“Please!” He screams, screwing his eyes shut and bracing himself for the light that will tear him apart, excruciatingly, atom by atom, until there is nothing left but—  
Warmth.  
He is enveloped in warmth and softness. His head is tucked under Aziraphale’s chin, pressed against the soft folds of Azirphale’s robe. Beneath the fabric, he can feel the angel’s chest rising and falling, hear the rhythmic beating of the angels’ heart, steady like a parent gently patting their baby. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. Ba-bump.  


“Of course I believe you,” Aziraphale murmurs, his voice less a sound than a soft rumbling that sends vibration through Crowley’s frame, filling his chest with a warmth that seem to melt the ice in his bones. There are a thousand explanations piling upon his tongue; there is a scream building up in his throat; his vision is starting to sting and blur. He feels as if his body is going to collapse from everything that’s boiling up and tearing at the seams. In the end, all he can manage is a weak, keening noise as he drenches Aziraphale’s clothes with tears.  


Aziraphale’s fingers find their way into his hair as the angel quietly shushes him. “Rest now, from this whole awful affair,” Aziraphale murmurs, cradling Crowley’s hair with one hand and drawing the demon closer to him with the other.  


It ought to hurt, Crowley thinks, vaguely, but all he feels is warmth, pouring out from the angel and into his battered body. His hand, the relatively uninjured one, comes up and grasps the front of Aziraphale’s robe as he presses himself tighter against the broad expanse of Azirphale’s chest. His eyelids are already drooping close when he feels strong, capable arms lift him up from the floor. A gentle voice whispers, “Dream of whatever it is you like best, my dear.”  
For the first time since he found himself in that circle, Crowley sleeps. There will be a time when he and Aziraphale have to talk about what happened in the cellar, but right now, his dreams are of light, safety, and warmth. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is inspired by the exquisitely painful art by fireflysummers [here](https://fireflysummers.tumblr.com/post/190562986646/its-mentioned-how-much-crowley-hated-the-14th)  
> Also, please check out [10yrsart](https://10yrsyart.tumblr.com), who's the original artist who designed the book!husbands' look, and whose interpretation of the characters was a major influence for me beside the book.  
> Remember to wash your hands and practice social distancing, children!


End file.
